● DEFECTIONS
THE JC has learned that Luciana Berger was the driving force behind the formation of the new Independent Group in the House of Commons. Over several months, she and close political ally Chuka Umunna concluded that remaining in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was no longer viable and the two MPs discussed their options.
Tellingly, it was Ms Berger, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree since 2010, who chaired the meeting at which seven MPs were unveiled to the media and watching public at the announcement of the new Independent Group of MPs.
It is expected that the group will soon become a national party, with insiders suggesting that Ms Berger would consider leading the party.
The JC understands that Ms Berger first concluded that she might have to leave Labour when she was addressing a synagogue meeting last year in the wake of the controversy over Mr Corbyn’s defence of the artist responsible for an antisemitic mural in Tower Hamlets. She could not bring herself to argue that Labour should be supported.
The Jewish MP resigned on Monday morning from the party she had first joined as a student, telling a press conference at County Hall that she now believed Labour had become “institutionally antisemitic.”
Ms Berger revealed that at no point in the past 14 months had Mr Corbyn spoken to her or offered her support over the near constant antisemitic abuse directed at her. Labour sources tried to counter this, suggesting that he had contacted to her for talks in recent weeks to keep her in the party.
But sources close to Ms Berger dismissed the claims of an attempt to prevent her leaving the Party.
“Jeremy walked past Luciana as she was speaking to John Bercow in the chamber and politely said ‘hello’,” revealed a source. “That hardly resembles an attempt to keep her in the party, at a time they knew she considering walking away from it.”
On Tuesday evening, as the seismic events of the past 24 hours were still being digested, Joan Ryan, the Enfield North MP and Labour Friends of Israel chair, announced that she was also leaving Labour after accusing Mr Corbyn of “presiding over a culture of antisemitism and hatred of Israel.”
Ms Ryan — who joined Labour in 1983 and became LFI chair in 2015 - later told the JC that she believed the move was
At no point in the past 14 months had Corbyn spoken’
her “duty” as Mr Corbyn’s Labour now represented “an existential threat to British Jews.”
Earlier on Monday, the other defectors to the Independent Group — Chuka Umunna, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker , Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey — had all cited the issue of Jew-hate as being amongst their reason for taking the “painful” decision to quit Labour.
Mr Gapes, the Ilford South MP was vociferous in his criticism saying: “I am sickened that the Labour
Party is now a racist, antisemitic party.”
But Jewish Labour MPs Ruth Smeeth and Dame Louise Ellman have ruled out leaving Labour — despite facing a deluge of antisemitic abuse from proCorbyn activists over the past few years.
Dame Louise told the JC she intends to carry on “fighting” antisemitism from inside. She said: “It is increasingly difficult — but I do not want to be hounded out.”
The Liverpool Riverside MP said she stood united with Ms Berger and others in the Independent Group, adding: “We all have the same objective and I am fighting from within the Labour Party.”
Speaking to the JC, Ms Berger said she hoped the Independent Group would provide the Jewish community with the “political home that they, like much of the rest of the country, are now looking for.”
“I’ve been struck by the emails, texts and messages coming from people within the Jewish community.
“Like so many people all across the country, they only see the main political parties being driven by the extreme of their spectrums and becoming increasingly narrowly focused and regrettably acting in party interests — rather than what is best for the country.”
The horrendous abuse faced by Ms Berger, particularly from hard-left activists in her Liverpool Wavertree constituency, was at the centre of her decision to leave. She was scathing of the decision made under general secretary Jennie Formby not to make her aware of specific threats against her, which are now the subject of a police investigation.
The threats were contained in a dossier sent to LBC radio station after being ignored by Labour, including one which suggested Ms Berger deserved a “good kicking”.
“Even if we put the antisemitism aside and even if we put political differences aside in the wake of the horrific and tragic murder of my colleague Jo Cox — the idea that you wouldn’t pass that [the threats] on…” she reflects.
“This was a party that was made aware of a physical threat against me and didn’t tell me about it — and didn’t tell the police about it.”
We were treated with utter contempt
Ms Berger confirmed that a Facebook post by Mr Corbyn supporting the artist who painted a clearly antisemitic mural in Tower Hamlets was the catalyst for a series of events that made her “painful” decision to leave the party inevitable.
“I didn’t get a proper response [from Mr Corbyn], then there was the fight to get the party to adopt the IHRA definition in full, which even at the last moment there was an attempt to undermine.
“Then there was what became known as the ‘summer of antisemitism’ — all the connections Jeremy had made, his statements of July, August and September — it really has got worse.
“More recently, two weeks in a row at the meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, we had a motion that was unanimously supported by party colleagues calling on the leadership to release the information about antisemitism cases — and we were treated with utter contempt.
“This has been something the leadership has sought to dismiss and turn a blind eye to every step of the way.
“That is why I have come to the conclusion the party is institutionally antisemitic.”
She also addressed the smears made against her after she appeared at last September’s Labour Party Conference accompanied by police bodyguards.
“The idea that people were seriously putting forward the claim that I placed myself adjacent to police officers in order to be photographed with them, or that I paid people to dress up as police officers [is ridiculous],” Ms Berger said.
“And the ridiculous notion that you can somehow just request police to be next to you — that doesn’t happen.
“I’m not allowed to speak in detail about my security situation but it’s not a secret that I’ve seen six people convicted of antisemitic hate crimes against me.”
In a telling intervention on Monday, Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said Ms Berger was a casualty of “a virulent form of identity politics that has seized the Labour Party”.
He added that he felt “deep sadness” at the resignations and insisted the seven were not “traitors”.
In her own resignation letter sent to Mr Corbyn, Ms Ryan said she was “forced” to resign from the Party she joined 25 years ago because the “values that led me to join” are now the “same values that have led me to leave it today.”
In a lengthy letter she said: “No previous Labour leader would have allowed this huge shame to befall the party.”
Ms Ryan added that Mr Corbyn’s “mind set, ideology and worldview that tolerates antisemitism poses a threat to the British public, Jew and non-Jew alike.”
At the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday evening, an attempt by the party’s chairman, Ian Lavery, to deliver a moral boosting plea of unity to MPs failed spectacularly — with Mr Lavery drawing howls of disapproval when he suggested that if his party was “institutionally antisemitic” he would not have become a member.
After the meeting, Dudley North MP Ian Austin told the JC: “If that’s the response of the leadership it will make the situation worse. I think you could see more people considering taking the same course of action.”
He said Mr Lavery had “failed to come close to demonstrating he understood the scale of the problem” Ruth Smeeth was said to be in tears as she spoke at the meeting. She raised a case in which she and fellow Jewish MP Dame Louise Ellman had been accused of lacking “human blood” by a Labour member.
“She first raised it months and months ago,” confirmed Mr Austin. “And yet the person is still a member of the party and still hasn’t been suspended.”